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Australia with a three year old: Sydney

Adventures of Ashton in the land down under : Part 1.

By Aurimas Adomavicius

June 21^st, 2019

Let's set the record straight - we weren't planning on taking a twenty five hour trip with a three year-old. And not because we don't believe in traveling with a young child - to date the little dude has visited a total of seven countries, a decent count for a subadult. But whoever arranged the good old landmasses on mother Earth really did a number on Australia, and it remained distant (quiet literally) in our travel bucket list.

Until, that is, Air New Zealand listed unreasonably and erroneously cheap business class tickets from Chicago to Auckland, from Auckland to Sydney ($1,300 a pop is less than economy fare!) I was halfway booking the tickets before the sixth sense of a husband kicked in and I decided to consult with my better half on the ingenuity of the plan. Short consult later and virtual tickets in hand we were ready to tackle the land down under.

And when I say tackle, I mean scratch the surface of a country that is misleadingly tiny on the globe and just as large as the North American continent in person.

The more we travel the more I realize that compact gear with as few lenses as possible is a better approach. I'm never going back to full frame cameras for travel (even the Canon EOSR offers minimal weight saving with the monstrous new lenses), but I still debated between the Fuji X-T2 and the Fuji X100F. Should I run two bodies? What lenses should I bring?

I settled on the X-T2 with three pieces of glass:

FUJIFILM XF 18mm f/2 R
Mitakon Zhongyi Speedmaster 35mm f/0.95 Mark II
FUJIFILM XF 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8 R LM OIS

F/0.95

The Mitakon Speedmaster 35mm F/0.95 is a manual focus lens that has the weight of a collapsed star... and spits out bokeh that rivals full frame legends like the Canon 50mm F1.2L.

I made it an objective to actively exercise the three focal lengths (the telephoto being a specialty lens for landscape compression) throughout the trip and only reviewed the stats once I purged and processed the loot. Images were somewhat evenly distributed across all three, with fewest images taken on the beastly 55-200mm.

The master plan

Disillusions of cross-country traversal laid to rest, we settled on the following agenda for our two weeks:

✈️ to Sydney and stay for three nights exploring the town
Catch a ✈️ to Melbourne, rent a 🚗
Stay for three nights on the Great Ocean Road
Drive back to Melbourne, stay for a night, explore the city
✈️ back to Sydney, rent a 🚗 and drive out to Wolgan Valley
Stay in Wolgan Valley for four nights
Drive back to Sydney, prep for the long ✈️ back

Not counting the transatlantic flights we would have a total of eleven nights in Australia.

Exploring Sydney and neighborhoods

We arrived mid-day and settled in at the Langham Sydney. Ashton is a stubborn (mom edit: strong willed) little dude, so during the planning stage we searched for hotels that would hit the following criteria:

off-the-beaten path so that lazy walks, playground visits would be easier
close enough to central attractions
would have a pool (yay 💦)

What's great about the Langham is that it's incredibly close to both the Rocks (good spot for dining, active evenings), the Circular Quay (most ferries leave from here), as well as the Darling Harbour - yet further North on Kent street where the hustle and bustle of the central business district ebbs away to a distant hum.

I can recommend a couple of great ways to see the town, as well as manage the battery of a three year-old: take a tour on the Sydney Big 🚌 and then jump on one of the 🛳 that hits up all local neighborhoods on a desired route. The bus allowed us to jump on/off anywhere we pleased, gave us an opportunity to see neighborhoods we would explore later in the trip, as well as lulled Ashton for a mid-day 😴 on moms hands - win/win! There’s also an audio track you can follow that covers the fundamentals of Sydney history and architecture, but my headphones were busted and I mainly enjoyed the mid-60’s weather and clicked the shutter.

Check the ferry schedule and planned stops before you jump on a particular line. We bought tickets to the zoo and ended up on a line that made 6 to 7 stops prior to Taronga Zoo ... which was fine, but left us only a few hours to explore the zoo prior to closing time.

The Taronga Zoo is one of the best zoo’s we’ve been to. A cable car took us up to the top of the hill and we snaked down through various exhibits - including immersive enclosures that allowed Ashton to walk amongst kangaroos, see large chickens (ostriches), as well as a night bat enclosure. Our personal favorite because we’re going through a Batman phase now… not so much for Virginija.

Here’s a pro-tip: find time for a run or two during your Sydney stay. It really helps get a better sense of the surrounding areas as well as spot things to explore at a slower pace. The mileage you cover on a run is much greater than what a three year old can walk, so look at it as scouting mission for good nibbles and tactical playgroups.

Speaking of playgroups, Sydney has invested epic dollars in building out common areas. Check out the Darling Quarter - a slick communal space with coffee shops, slides, green spaces, as well as a water duct framework that lets kids reroute water flow, etc.

Ashton got a bit too excited about the former and managed to take a proper dive into one of the channels while yours truly was fiddling with the camera. We quickly identified a small convenience store just across the playground that sold spare clothes… props to the opportunist store owner, must be a regular occurrence. 😂

While Ashton bothered the locals at the playground we hung out on a bench watching people dressed in business attire head to work. Things felt… less rushed in Sydney. Come to think of it - everywhere in Australia. Running through the parks and streets of Sydney I had the sensation that the quality of life was really high - clean, beautiful streets, well designed communal areas, plentiful green spaces, and the never ending coastline with it’s beaches make the city really special. Since the cost of living is really high in Sydney, It’s hard for me to asses how accessible all of this is to the locals…

After an epic lunch at Local Mbassy, we jumped into a cab and drove out to Bondi beach to see the picturesque ocean water pools… which apparently are closed for cleaning the one day that we decide to visit. Nevertheless, we crashed on the sand and while Ashton filled my shoes with sand watched the locals surf, congregate, and be spoiled bastards that live in a metropolis with over 100 beaches (I looked that up, it just isn’t fair).

We capped off our evening with a walk around the Rocks, took tourist pictures of the Sydney Opera, and watched the city slip into night at the Dawes Point Battery while Ash explored the canons and attempted to establish an industrial grade excavation site in a random sandbox. Or perhaps it was just a dirt patch… he was busy, we were happy lying on the grass and watching him play.